Corrigan Moving and Storage Co.

Problem to be solved: It was understandable that a family-run business of 85 years had gotten a little stuck in its ways.

But about eight years ago, the time had come for Corrigan Moving and Storage Co. to get with the times when it came to technology.

It wasn't unusual for moving companies and their warehouse workers to rely on pen and paper and spreadsheets for the day-in, day-out work of managing inventory, and that's how Corrigan did it.

Nathan Corrigan

"It was not competitive. Customers were coming to us and asking for online visibility, bar-coding, scanning," said Nathan Corrigan, the company's vice president.

He delved into the task of getting a software system, first by checking out off-the-shelf products. He wasn't impressed.

"I found many that solved one little problem," Corrigan said. "As long as you could fit your business into their little box, it worked perfectly fine."

Then Corrigan hired an outside company to build one. "After six months of work, they couldn't solve the problem," he said.

Solution: "We built it ourselves," Corrigan said.

He researched systems and customer needs and cobbled together a team of one former employee and a contractor to do the technical work, building the system using outside software and in-house customization. A year later the company's Warehouse Management System deployed.

The total cost — including the money paid to outside developers in the first go-around — was $250,000.

Truck drivers now are connected to the system through iPads, items coming into the warehouses are bar-coded and scanned, and customers can go to run reports and an online portal to see the products they have stored in Corrigan's warehouses.

David Corrigan

"This product Nathan developed allowed us to get into what we call today logistics," said David Corrigan, the company's president and COO and Nathan's father.

That viewing ability opened doors to new customers — such as interior design companies that need to see what they have in the way of furniture and decorative pieces so they can plan for a new job, or universities that keep their office computer inventory off-site but need to see it when planning changes.

"Many of those (customers) we couldn't have handled prior to this system," Nathan Corrigan said.

Risks and considerations: If a software firm couldn't do it, why would a moving company be any better at it? "There's a real chance you're not going to be able to pull it off," Nathan Corrigan said.

If it hadn't worked, Corrigan Moving and Storage would have wasted a year and a lot of money — and still not have what customers wanted.

Expert opinion: Arcadio Ramirez, a technology business consultant for the Michigan Small Business Development Center, said companies should carefully consider the decision to build a system in-house because once they build it, it's on them to maintain it, and they might end up with a clunky system.

"A lot of home-brewed solutions don't have the flexibility or breadth as what's on the market," Ramirez said.

But if a business decides to go for it, one thing it can do is to carefully write out exactly what is the business process in question, step by step, so developers don't end up spinning their wheels.

Said Ramirez: "Understanding your processes, putting them down on paper, knowing precisely what they are will be a big help for whoever is writing that software."